Paris Trout (38 page)

Then she dropped against the asphalt and crawled
without moving forward, stuck to the road and sliding from side to
side, until some sense inside her was satisfied that she had crawled
far enough, and she lay quietly against the road and waited.

Called back to the business of dying.

He saw it wasn't so bad —
she just pulled further back from the world, into the safest, deepest
places inside her.

* * *

THE FIRST PERSON TO see Paris Trout after he got off
the bus at Cotton Point was Sheriff Edward Fixx. It was the sheriff s
habit to drive from his office to the Greyhound depot after lunch and
watch the passengers leaving the twelve-fifteen express. There was a
bulletin board in his office filled with the faces of wanted men —
faces and descriptions and methods of operation — and he required
his six deputies and Arlene, the radio dispatcher, to read the board
every day, not only for the wanted posters but for the admonitions he
wrote on note cards and stuck there with thumbtacks.

It was a world full of rewards for those who knew
what they were looking for.

Sheriff Fixx took his customary seat at the end of
the bench closest to the doors and watched the faces, hoping for one
that would set off a warning. There were too many pictures to
memorize, so the sheriff studied them when they came in, relying on
his instincts to tell him when he came across one of them in person.
It was a certain feeling he got when there was trouble.

And today the feeling was suddenly on him like a
stroke. A tall, gray — haired man in a suit. The sheriff caught a
glimpse, less than a profile, and sat straight up, feeling for his
holster. A moment later he realized who it was. The sheriff removed
his hat and wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief Paris Trout
walked through the glass doors into the depot, right past him, and
went to the telephone.

When Trout finished his call, Sheriff Fixx pressed
the same receiver against his ear and dialed Judge Taylor. "Paris
Trout just got off the twelve-fifteen," he said.

'
°What am I supposed to do about that?" the
judge said.

"
I thought you might want to know, is all."

"Shit," he said, and hung up.

Sheriff Fixx walked carefully to the front door and
looked outside. Trout was standing on the curb with a Negro woman and
a couple of cadets from the officers' academy. His suit was wrinkled,
and there was some dirt on his shoes, but there was no other sign
that he had been away. Sheriff Fixx remembered the men in suits and
white shoes in the warden's office.

Lawyers.

Sheriff Fixx had walked to the depot that day because
his cruiser — the new one — was being repaired, and he'd had to
send deputies out in the other three cars on county calls. He thought
of his new car, mangled in the drive with Paris Trout to Petersboro
County, and now, with the car still in the body shop at Country Ford,
Trout was back in town.

The man had put a gun against his jaw — although
the sheriff decided later he never meant to use it — and then damn
near beat him home.

Sheriff Fixx walked through the door and stood just
behind him. "I see you got time off for good behavior," he
said. The sheriff had a bent for sarcasm.

Trout reached into his pocket and came out with a
folded paper and handed it to him.

"What's this, a pardon from the governor?"

"
Habeas corpus," Trout said.

"
Hocus-pocus, you mean."

Trout took the paper out of Sheriff Fixx's hand and
put it back in his pocket. "It's legal as anything else,"
he said. And then while Sheriff Fixx stood there thinking of an
answer, a black Pontiac pulled into the curb with the peg-legged
woman that worked for Trout behind the wheel, and he got in and drove
away.

The sheriff watched the car until it turned, trying
to remember if it was legal for a peg — legged woman to drive. Then
he started the walk back to the station, smiling at people so they
would think it was natural for the sheriff to be walking. By the time
he got there, he had decided what he was going to do about Paris
Trout, which was nothing.

If habeas corpus was good enough for Judge Taylor, it
was good enough for him. He thought it had about worn Cotton Point
out, taking Trout as far as it did.

He made up his mind though, to search him in the
event he had to ride him back to Petersboro County. He wouldn't have
a prisoner carrying any kind of weapon in an official car again and
posted a notice to that effect on the bulletin board that evening.
 

CARL BONNER
PART
SEVEN

Monday morning of the next week some of Cotton
Point's most prominent citizens and politicians gathered over
breakfast at the home of Mayor Horn to begin plans for the town's
sesquicentennial celebration, to be held the following spring. Among
those invited to the meeting were the presidents of the Rotary, the
Elks, the Order of the Moose, and the junior Chamber of Commerce, and
all those organizations' ladies' auxiliaries.

Four of the five members of the Sesquicentennial
Planning Committee were present: Harry Seagraves, Carl Bonner, Ward
Townes, and Dr. Hodges, who owned a furniture store. Only Walker
Hargrove of the First Bank of Georgia was absent, but no one had
expected him to make it. Bankers had things to do.

Estes Singletary was there too, with his wife, who
took pictures for the news story she would write. Mrs. Singletary had
been a cub reporter before she married.

The meeting, according to Mrs. Singletary's account
in the paper the following Thursday, "went swimmingly, with
ideas contributed from a great many sources, some of them
delightfully unexpected."

The ideas, which Mrs. Singletary did not divulge in
her newspaper account, included plans for a pageant to be held on the
football field at the officers' academy, a train ride to Atlanta —
although some of those present thought it was antisocial to celebrate
the existence of Cotton Point by riding off to Atlanta — and a town
ordinance requiring every man who could grow one to wear a beard.

A three-member subcommittee of lawyers was formed
that morning to enforce the ordinance. The Keepers of the Bush. Mayor
Horn appointed Harry Seagraves chairman, calling him the "finest
criminal mind in Georgia".

When breakfast was over, the mayor's maid cleared the
silverware, and the women, on some unspoken signal, separated into
the far end of the house. When they had left, the mayor bit the end
off a cigar and stuck it in his mouth. The others lit cigarettes,
except for Estes Singletary, who used a pipe, and for most of an hour
they discussed the pros and cons of constructing public stocks in
front of the courthouse for those who showed up clean-shaven during
Sesquicentennial Week.

The mayor was for it; Harry Seagraves was opposed.
They talked over who all was likely to refuse to grow beards and how
they would look with their ankles and wrists in stocks, laughing at
some of the names, eyes watering in the smoke.

It was the newspaperman who brought up the subject of
Paris Trout. He looked right at Seagraves and said, "Whatever
the punishment, it ought to be worse than Paris Trout got for killing
that Negro child."

Seagraves had been sitting with his hands folded
across his stomach, feeling full and lazy and happy. Without having
moved a muscle, everything had changed. "I didn't have any part
in that," he said.

Estes Singletary shrugged. "You're the lawyer."

"
My association with Mr. Trout ended with his
last appeal," he said.

"I would of thought you'd known that, running
the Conscience of Georgia." Which was the
Plain
Talk's
motto.

Estes Singletary saw that Seagraves was angry and
tried to undo what he had said. "I didn't mean it in a personal
way, Harry," he said. "I only meant that Trout was
convicted of a crime in this town and sentenced and then showed up
loose on the street the day after he went to jail, and nobody's said
a thing about it."

"
You own the paper," Seagraves said. "Why
don't you put something in there?"

"I might," Singletary said, but everyone at
the table knew he was afraid to offend advertisers. The table was
quiet, and the maid came out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee and
walked from place to place, freshening the cups.

Only Carl Bonner refused more, putting his hand over
the cup and shaking his head. She smiled at him and said, "You
ain't had but one cup, Mr. Bonner," but he did not answer. His
attention was at the other end of the table. After she poured coffee
for the mayor, she looked over all the cups again to make sure no one
had been missed and then smiled. "All right, I'll go see the
ladies need something and leave y'all go back to your discussions."

But the discussions were over. Five minutes passed.
Ward Townes checked his pocket watch and remembered he was due in
court. Seagraves stood up with him, thanking the mayor for breakfast,
and said he would think about the stocks. Then Dr. Hodges and the
Singletarys. They left one by one until only the mayor and Carl
Bonner were there in the dining room.

"
You know somebody in Petersboro County who
could tell me how Paris Trout got out?" Bonner said.

Mayor Horn took two cigars from his coat pocket,
offered one to the young attorney, and bit the end off the other.
Bonner bit the end off his and allowed the mayor to light it.

"
You don't want nothing to do with Pete County,"
the mayor said finally. "You don't need nothing to do with Paris
Trout either. Estes Singletary there, he's got a mouth on him, but he
won't say nothing when he's out of this room. The lesson is don't
ever invite a newspaperman anyplace there's people with manners ....
"

The mayor stopped for a moment, considering his
words. He said, "Cotton Point did as much as it could about
Paris Trout already, Mr. Bonner. You don't do yourself or your law
practice any favors bringing it back up."

"
I don't intend to bring it up," he said.
"It might be useful, is all. I represent Mrs. Trout in her suit
for dissolution, and Paris Trout has stalled her every way there is."

The mayor frowned. He had known and admired Hanna
Nile most of his life. He had heard of her trouble getting loose of
Paris. "There is a man that will know who got paid," he
said fmally. "Most likely he got part of it."

Carl Bonner sat up in his chair and waited.

"
You don't need me to tell you who," the
mayor said, suddenly angry. "The writ's a public document,
you're supposed to be eastern educated, all you got to do is go down
there and read the damn name."

Carl Bonner stood up then, the mayor stayed where he
was. Very slowly he ground the lighted end of his cigar into the
scrambled eggs left on his plate, twisting until the end flattened
out and began to shred.

"I assure you I'll be discreet," Bonner
said.

"
Let me ask you
something," the mayor said. "If there was something
discreet to do about Paris Trout, you think that the people in this
room this morning wouldn't of done it already?"

* * *

IT TOOK CARL BONNER five minutes to find the name of
the judge who had released Paris Trout. Raymond Mims. He sat in the
Petersboro County Courthouse the rest of the afternoon, finding other
writs of habeas corpus that Mims had signed for prisoners at the work
camp. There were eight by the time the clerk shut off the lights.

Bonner decided to stay in town that night, in the
best hotel room he could find, and charge the bill to Hanna Trout's
account, to be paid by her husband as part of the eventual divorce
settlement. He intended to hurt Paris Trout as badly as he could.

For two and a half years he'd been filing every kind
of legal paper he could file, but each time Trout filed papers of his
own, delaying hearings, arguing against producing whatever documents
Bonner had requested. Trout was familiar with the soft places in the
law, where things got lost or slowed or misplaced.

Carl Bonner's practice had grown in that time, but
not in the way he had expected. The money he made was still from
other attorneys' referrals, he had no big accounts, no important
clients.
 
And Hanna Trout's divorce
was waiting for him every morning when he woke up and still nagging
him when he went home at night. Some nights, in fact, he felt as if
Trout were in his home. Behind one of the closet doors in back,
working against him.

He found a hotel with
phones in the rooms and called his secretary just before six and
asked her to call his wife and tell her he would not be home. He
spoke to his wife through his secretary two or three times a day now.
Sometimes he called them by each other's names.  And after he
had called his office, he called Hanna Trout.

* * *

SEAGRAVES WAS LYING IN the daybed with her when the
phone rang.

She was in a slip, he had kicked off his shoes and
loosened his tie. He held a glass of iced tea on his stomach, and it
spilled as she got up to answer the phone. He came here once or twice
a week, there was a way in through the alley in back.